Brainwashed in the Blood?
As a Pentecostal, I'm not too thrilled with the way kids from my denomination are depicted in Jesus Camp. Matter of fact, this new documentary ticks me off—for a number of reasons.
By Rich Tatum | posted 2/07/2006
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Jesus Camp, what an experience. Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady's investigation into the hidden world of one Pentecostal kids' camp simultaneously delighted me, fascinated me, and embarrassed me. As a Pentecostal myself, I love this film. And I hate it.
It angers me.
The premise for the documentary, now playing in limited theaters, is simple: follow three pre-teens from Missouri heading to a summer camp in Devils Lake, North Dakota. Document their experiences there, and follow up on the aftermath. Simple enough.
But the devil, as they say, is in the details. Or, in this case, the future Evangelical Army of God is in the details.
Liberals don't get us
While Ewing and Grady admit they honestly liked the people they were documenting, there's no denying they don't get them. Ewing and Grady—recently interviewed by CT Movies—are outsiders to the culture they depict.
While this alone isn't bad—documentary filmmakers set out to learn and teach simultaneously—it can lead to gross errors of representation and interpretation. The risk of bias and misrepresentation is no less real for liberal New York democrats filming Pentecostals than it would be for a Pentecostal documenting a convention of Darwinists.
Early in the film we are introduced to our angry guide for this tour of the evangelical underworld: Mike Papantonio, liberal Methodist, top-flight lawyer, host of Air America's Ring of Fire talk show, and one of Air America's board members. He informed a caller to his program—and us by the way—about "some new brand of religion out there. … And right now everything they do they say they do in the name of God: that we need to go to war in the name of God; we're being told that George Bush, of all people, is a holy man who's been anointed with the job of creating a Christian society—not just in America but all over the world. … There's this entanglement of politics with religion. What kind of lesson is that for our children?"
If you're wondering what this has to do with a religious children's camp documentary, join the crowd. The truth is, there is no real connection. But, hey, we need conflict to tell a story, right? So Ewing and Grady have found their navigator through the murky swamp of evangelical warmongering, and "Pap" is his name.
Radio host Mike Papantonio
Does it matter that evangelicalism or Pentecostalism is not new? Does it matter that no evangelical preacher I've heard of denies the relevance of the Sermon on the Mount? Does it matter that "peace-making" is not incompatible with defending the weak and oppressed? Does it matter that I've never once heard of George Bush being referred to as a "holy man" either in church, in private conversation, or in all the pages of Christianity Today? No, no, no, and no. Yet, Papantonio says it, thus it must be, he begins and ever remains unchallenged in the context of this film.
Again, this has nothing to do with kids' camps. Ewing and Grady may have started out making a documentary about kids camps, faith, and childhood, but along the way it became simply camp itself. Their film has inadvertently become just another repeat of Hillary Clinton's "vast right wing conspiracy" theory.
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